WWE Money in the Bank 7/18/21

The Usos vs. Rey & Dominik Mysterio

ER: This feels like a pretty high profile tag to throw on the pre-show, although I also felt like it was too big a match to do on Smackdown and they already did that. This is a tag title match, wasn't expecting it on the pre-show, but honestly the match didn't quite gel the way I expected it to. Jey felt a little off, looked sluggish on back bumps, didn't work with Dominik well, just didn't feel right. Things picked up when Rey tagged in, but the match never felt totally clean. It was laid out well and built to a couple of big reactions (including an excellent late Rey kickout that really looked like the finish), but there was an occasional hitch in the timing. There were a couple great moments down the stretch, with Jimmy saving Jey by jumping face first into the 619 a highlight, and I like the belts on the Usos more than on the Mysterios, so the heart of this was in the right place. I just think there is a list level match between these two teams and this was not that. 

Alexa Bliss vs. Liv Morgan vs. Nikki A.S.H. vs. Natalya vs. Tamina vs. Zelina Vega vs. Naomi vs. Asuka

ER: This feels like it could be a mess, but I'm rooting for them. Apparently, I did not root hard enough. This is one of those bad modern MITB matches where WWE only likes to focus on two people at once, so less than 2 minutes into this several of these women just disappear to the floor. Naomi hit a great Rear View and then was gone, lying hidden for 5+ minutes. Nikki vanished, they all vanish for long stretches here. It's awful. God bless the crowd for staying with this one, as there were many long gaps between some brief inspired moments. Asuka had a nice tear midway through but that ended with a flat Tamina ladder tipping spot when Asuka was maybe 3 feet off the ground and acting panicked. Natalya throws a nice clothesline but also frequently looks like someone who has never handled a ladder in their life. Tamina can be a wrecking ball but is also a klutz. Nikki got a big reaction for doing a ladder dive off to everyone else but soaked in the crowd for ages before corgi jumping the ladder. I'm torn on the two big Nikki moments, as I appear to be one of the few who actually views this ASH gimmick as a major positive for her, but she really hung 7 people out to dry during both her big moments. It's hard for 7 people to all fight amongst themselves while waiting on one person, and we got to see that ugliness for far too long while Nikki climbed ladders. This whole thing was a mess, just a series of seeing people calmly hiding out of sight, waiting for their turn. It's a terrible way to work this kind of match and I don't think there are any 8 wrestlers who could have succeeded with a similar layout. 

Viking Raiders vs. AJ Styles/Omos

ER: This may have gone a touch too long and a couple things felt a bit repetitive, but this was the kind of tag necessary to bring things back after that trainwreck of a Money in the Bank match. Styles has been tremendous in his tag with Omos, the perfect partner to mentor that giant, and they have been really good at tailoring matches around Omos. He's got decent timing already and at that size timing will take you incredibly far. Their teamwork is already strong, and the Vikings are a team with cool double teams, so this is a naturally fun pairing. Styles is so great at both making up the size difference by working stiff with the Vikings, but also running headlong into their big man offense. Styles gets tossed and slammed by Erik, smooshed by Ivar, gets thrown into several Erik kneelifts, and nails the timing on several (needlessly complicated) Ivar tumbles and cartwheels. Styles is great at being thrown, a guy who can pull off a sky high backdrop, yet also get absolutely LAUNCHED by Omos into a rana on the floor. Great catch by Erik, great throw by Omos, great death wish from AJ. I loved how this whole thing shook out, thought the Raiders looked strong against a dominant team, but really I just want Styles and Omos to hold the belts for a couple years. This is a good dominant team, perfectly complementary. It's the perfect way for Omos to continue to grow, and it's almost surely true that we haven't even seen their best work as a team. 

Bobby Lashley vs. Kofi Kingston

ER: This was not at all the match I expected. I honestly wouldn't have been shocked at a surprise Kofi title win due to someone costing Lashley the match, sending Lashley off in a different feud before sending him back to Kofi. But I did not expect Kofi to get steamrolled...and also I kind of liked it? I'm sure people will complain, but I think Kofi is as bulletproof as a babyface can get. I don't think there is any kind of loss that will make the fans stop wildly cheering for Kofi, certainly not while he's getting annihilated by the monster Lashley. Kofi will recover, and if they play their cards right they can build to a Kofi return challenge the could be a REAL money match. It was more valuable to give Lashley a dominant win, and this was a GREAT dominant win. Kofi sold his beating really well and Lashley looked savage, ragdolling Kofi on throws and throwing hard hammer blows at the side of his head. I like when a babyface gets run over by a heel, victim of an opponent that started out too hot to comeback from. It's not a match you can do often, but a match that is super effective when done right. A lot will depend on what they do with both after this, but I welcome this kind of violent squash. 

Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte

ER: This is a feud that has done very little for me, with bad chemistry and little good coming from it. But I was still curious how it would work with the live crowd, and I guess I still don't know? This was probably the most actual chemistry Charlotte and Ripley have shown together, and there were still big stretches where things didn't look good. It is just always going to be a bad thing for anyone who gets into a feud with Charlotte. She is a heel who doesn't know how to work heel (outside of really getting rattled by the fans' Becky chants and flipping off the arena, but she stopped that behavior almost immediately after starting it). So we get one of those Charlotte matches where every spot they build to is a big babyface Charlotte spot, and so the crowd just keeps reacting for Charlotte and clearly viewing Rhea as the lesser babyface. It's no good, even if the 3rd act is better than the first two. Charlotte looked gaunt and actually ill during the match and made an unfortunate makeup decision to have a bright red underline, making her look like she'd been crying the entire match. Her making crying faces after every single kickout didn't help things either and only added to the match confusion. Rhea looked like someone with no chance, Charlotte looked like someone who really knows how to whip her head into the mat whenever she attempts a moonsault. Charlotte hasn't hit the Andrade back elbow cleanly one time since she started doing it in every match, but maybe before the year is out she'll manage to hit one without tripping over her feet. This match was an ugly mess at times, but the crowd got into it as they built to the finish so it wasn't a total loss. They just don't look good against each other, and I am tired of Charlotte's heel babyface routine. 

Kevin Owens vs. Matt Riddle vs. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Ricochet vs. John Morrison vs. Big E vs. Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: This one also did not work at all, for the exact same reasons as the women's MITB. This layout was atrocious, and the number of disappearing participants was absurd. You would hardly know that Ricochet was in this match, he's completely absent for a 10 minute stretch but at least gets a highlight worthy springboard dive. But everyone disappears!! Because we can only focus on a couple of guys, and the other six are not allowed to do anything distracting while those two people are being focused on. It's the same exact kind of agenting that has ruined the Royal Rumble, where you have 14 guys leaning against the ropes barely fighting, because the newest entrant has to run in and do several one on one signature moves. They now do that in ladder matches. Owens took the biggest bumps, McIntyre had the hardest chops (he seriously moved Morrison and Rollins back two steps with chops), and Rollins brought good energy to limited moments. Riddle and Nakamura had a terrible strike exchange, Morrison did a flipping cannonball that caught 100% mat, I'm pretty sure every single person hit some kind of cutter off the ladders, just a badly done gimmick match. It blows that we're married into these gimmick match PPVs and I'm not sure what it will take for them to get rid of any of them, but my god would they benefit from it. Either nobody knows how to agent these gimmick matches any longer, or fewer guys understand how to work them, but this trend is dire. 

Edge vs. Roman Reigns

ER: I knew this was not going to be for me, was going to feel way too long, and was going to feature a lot of Edge face. It certainly went too long, and while I loved Roman laying a long headlock on Edge to troll the fans, there were plenty of boring dull moments where nobody was being trolled, just losing interest. The big spears through the barricade played well with the crowd, but there was a lot of trash. The Charles Robinson ref bump lead to a few blatantly dumb moments, beginning with Robinson being kept out for a long period of time just from standing near Edge when Edge got punched. This is a man who took one on the chin from Tank Abbott! Surely he can stand a couple feet away from another man being punched. The Usos/Mysterios interference was quick and well done, slick rana from Rey and a silla from Dominik, but it lead to a rough moment where Roman kicked out of an Edge spear after possibly being tricked by the crowd's chanting? If it was HHH or Charlotte you instantly assume that it's a power move, but this just looked like an embarrassing mistake that blew the nearfall. Roman awesomely stands by and lets Edge and Rollins battle it out, so not only does Edge not even get a visual pin on Reigns, you immediately DO get the visual of Reigns being the smartest man in the room and letting the other beardos fight amongst themselves. The Cena return is a huge surprise, the exact kind of thing you do your first PPV in front of a live crowd.

I thought this show was a real flop and only the Raw tag title match really worked for me, but every major news outlet will be talking about John Cena's return tomorrow, and Roman is positioned strongly for Summerslam. I didn't love a lot of the in ring execution of the matches tonight, but the results set a pretty nice looking card for Summerslam and that feels more important than me hating the MITB matches and being tired of Charlotte title reigns.

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WWE Money in the Bank Mother's Day Live Blog

I visited my mother yesterday (my parents are hell on a 6' space, my calves are burning from all the backpedaling I kept having to do) and gave her a cool gift, so that excuses me to watch wrestling of potentially questionable quality on her special day. Let's hope for something good out of this show so that I can at least justify my not calling her to hear repeated stories about dumb things my father has done during quarantine.


Jeff Hardy vs. Cesaro

ER: So Hardy misses an entire year with an injury, they bring him back to Smackdown two months ago, spent the interim showing weekly documentaries about his rehabilitation (which hardly anyone gets, let alone several weeks of them), and then put him on the pre-show? I know that card placement matters less in no crowd era, but it's still really odd. It doesn't really matter to me, as the pre-show are almost always good, and they're worked in a way that makes them feel like good Velocity or 09-10 Superstars matches. They almost always hit the match length sweet spot and the layouts always feel so much less produced than main show matches. That feels like it shouldn't be the case, but there's too much of a sample size at this point. And this was really good! This was a much better singles match than I expected Hardy to physically be able of delivering at this point, but the longest straight time off of his career seems to have really done him good. He's moving quicker and more fluidly than he has in the past many years, but he's still taking the same level of awkward painful bumps so I'll just enjoy this while it lasts. He works quick enough here to convincingly fluster Cesaro, but you knew the best moments of this would revolve around what Cesaro does once he catches him. Cesaro catches him leaping off the ring steps and splats him ribs first over the barricade, later shoves him hard hip first into the ring apron. Hardy always seems to take damage on the least padded parts of the human body. Hardy's hard landings here were really entertaining, loved how Cesaro played off him (his big Fuerza bump over Hardy on the ropes was awesome), really liked all of this.

Big E/Kofi Kingston vs. Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado vs. The Miz/John Morrison vs. Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler

ER: This was good, but it feels like I've been seeing this exact match every week for the past several weeks. When they were running this on TV I just assumed the PPV version would have some extra gimmick or stipulation, but it was just longer. Still it was good overall, not always the tightest multiman, not always the pairings I wanted to see, but good. I really like Forgotten Sons, and I realize I'm in the minority on that. Gimmicks aren't the thing that sells me on a worker, ring work is the main thing I care about, and their ring work is more interesting than most teams in WWE. Their double teams are rock solid, neither skimp on small things (Cutler has far better stomps and kicks to the stomach than anyone else in the match), but also add in big bumps (Blake is always good for at least one big bump to the floor per match). Also, big fan of their double team hiptoss to an opponent draped over the ropes, and they're good at coming up with logical spots like that. I'm completely tired by the Miz/Morrison team at this point, and New Day isn't far behind them on people I wish were featured less. But it's cool seeing them work with the Sons and LHP. Dorado and Morrison pulled off a cool dragon rana, Metalik looked awesome with his while hair flowing around his mask (while working too fast for Kofi who looked like a stumblebum side by side), we got a big Morrison Spanish fly to the floor (while far more people than necessary awkardly stood around like goobs), and this was plenty good.

R-Truth vs. Bobby Lashley

ER: This match was nothing anyway, throwaway match as part of a feud I could not care about, so it's not much of a crime that I was distracted throughout this. Because once I noticed that the announcers ONLY refer to Bobby Lashley as "Bobby Lashley", it was all I could concentrate on. This is a promotion that has been weirdly obsessed with changing someone's name to a single word name, and yet we can't go through ANY part of the match with hearing "Lashley with the slam" or "Lashley with the pin", it ALWAYS has to be "Bobby Lashley with the pin!" Bobby Lashley, Bobby Lashley, Bobby Lashley. They could not stop saying this man's full fucking Christian name for 5 seconds. Nobody else gets this treatment. They either lose one of their names entirely, getting called - very normally - by ONLY their last name in a match because we know who this person is at this point, or have some kind of nickname that you can alternate with (Roman with the slam! The Big Dog with the spear!). But they can only and ever call this one person by their full name. Whose direction is this, any why? This can not be an accident and now we all have ONE MORE reason to hate Bobby Lashley segments.

Bayley vs. Tamina

ER: You have seen me write about this before, and as long as they keep doing it every year I will continue writing about it, but I cannot stand the 2-4 month period of every one of the last 10 years that WWE insists on telling us that Tamina matters and we need to be serious about Tamina and here's your yearly Tamina PPV match challenging for a title before we realize "well she's still Tamina so we didn't learn". There were people like Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, and Sarah Logan, the former who was returning from a long injury, the latter two who have been quietly overdelivering on syndicated TV matches and house shows for years...but we're going for our 10th go round on Tamina, so you gals will have to back up a bit. You can tell she's really trying, but every year it's the same bad gear and the same way of cumbersomely getting into position for opponent offense. However, this was a real class Bayley performance, as her working aggressively and outpacing the larger Tamina made the match much more interesting than it should have been, and made Tamina's monster moments feel bigger because it's not just her badly dominating a match, it's her using a couple things in spurts. Bayley outsmarts her and it makes Bayley getting the tables turned into some interesting stuff. Bayley bumps big for her when she does eventually go on the rampage, including a big flying bump over the announce table. Tamina still comes off klutzy throughout, but the layout is really smart and she at least does her best within the layout. She does a clumsy missed superkick, but the spot is Bayley catching it and turning it into a kneebar, so her clumsy kick wasn't the important thing in the spot. The match felt carefully constructed to be about spots where her clumsiness was out of the way quickly because it set up something better from Bayley. Bayley's high cradle finish looked great, a legit pin that looked like anyone on the roster would have had a hard time kicking out of, and it went just the right amount of time. Post match is even good, with Tamina immediately picking up Bayley for a samoan drop after losing, but Sasha drops her with a great chop block and then throws a stiff kick to her chest in high heel boots. I'm calling this an easy best case scenario for a Tamina singles match, could not imagine a better version of this particular match.

Braun Strowman vs. Bray Wyatt

ER: I'm happy this was kept short, I just can't get into Bray Wyatt. I actually liked the Fire Fly match, but it's not enough to buy him any kind of goodwill. Still, this was kept short and that's good. Strowman took a few really cool big man bumps (great missed charge into and over the announce table, real sturdy shoulderblock getting thrown into the ring steps), and then got in the ring and got hugged for a long time so I could look at Twitter for a bit. Then Strowman finished him, and I like that.  But honestly this had the same amount of time to do something as Bayley/Tamina had, and this came nowhere close to accomplishing what they did.

Drew McIntyre vs. Seth Rollins

ER: Didn't feel like this one, but I'm sure Rollins talked about his destiny several times and had a Seth Rollins match, which I'm sure are for somebody. I feel bad for McIntyre that this is how his title reign is going, but I wish him the best. I saw the finish of Seth Rolling hitting a superkick by being bounced into the ropes by a nice headbutt, and the superkick causing McIntyre to bounce into the ropes and hit the Claymore kick. Claymore kick looked good, but guys hitting moves because they got hit by moves is the dumbest most played out shit at this point.

Money in the Bank

ER: Oh my god they're doing the Money in the Bank matches CONCURRENTLY!? This has potential to be a tremendous trainwreck, one of those ideas like World War 3 that you can't focus on anything. But World War 3 could have had great potential as a recorded match, as the worst thing about it was knowing there was probably something cool happening somewhere in those 3 rings, and you were likely missing it. Filming one of those and showing the finished product with the best moments chosen from the camera angles would have been a way more successful version of that match. The whole thing has this fake Michael Kamen score that makes it feel like a bunch of backyarders made a movie combining Die Hard and Rat Race. The comedy doesn't work anywhere near as consistently as in Rat Race, but there were tons of great moments and a fantastic lead performance from Otis. The cameo jokes were almost all poorly written (Stephanie plays comedy too smarmy and broad, Brother Love stuff felt forced and pointless, Johnny Ace at least at a pie to the face well), but I smiled a lot and laughed a few times. Otis is the guy who really went for it, and really it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he thrived here. He's someone who can do Looney Tunes spot well, and was constantly saying funny stuff like in the weight room before the match started where he was just saying "sets and reps, sets and reps". It was funny hearing Carmella's sneakers breaking silence with different sounds, milking a squeaky waxed lobby floor for laughs and then doing the same by doing an overly long moonwalk on office carpet. Otis absolutely plastered Heyman with a dish in catering, and Heyman mugged while covered in sticky rice. Otis and Nia smash Rey between their bodies, Dana Brooke slips on a wet floor and is never seen again, Shayna weirdly feels like the least featured person in the match, and things get decidedly less fun once they get out on the roof. The roof stuff was fairly uninspired, other than two casual murders that never get mentioned again. I'm happy with the two winners, as I wouldn't have had money on Asuka or Otis, but think that those two have been two of the best performers of the silent era. I like when matches seem to reward performance.


This show went by quickly (though there was some small help from the fast forward during the Rollins match) and had no high end matches, but had some nice performances, some over-deliveries, slightly better than expected overall.

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Men's Money in the Bank

Baron Corbin vs. Finn Balor vs. Ricochet vs. Andrade vs. Ali vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton vs. Brock Lesnar WWE Money in the Bank 5/19

ER: Within the first two minutes of this, Andrade takes a gorgeous Jerry bump, Ali gets backdropped on a table, Balor gets backdropped on a table, Ricochet hits a springboard 450 to the floor, and Ricochet gets backdropped on a table. This match feels like it knows it can definitively be the best of the night. They do a lot of big things here, and it consistently looks good and painful. Ali and Ricochet both eat backdrops onto ladders, and Andrade spectacularly springboard dropkicks Orton off a ladder. This has been a night where agents have laid out some real clunkers, so guys stepping in and having one of those fun WWE Heavyweight X Division matches is going to come off even better. WWE has a decent history of being able to do a "many guys chaining together offense" multiman, and this played like one of the good ones. Andrade hitting a sunset flip powerbomb on Finn off a ladder through another ladder - Andrade landing on his feet and Finn recoiling like a skinny kid getting bounced off a trampoline by two fat kids - was one of the most spectacular WWE spots of the last decade. That was WWE stealing the brilliant insanity from the Crazy Crusher vs. Hell Storm Canadian backyard ladder match. Ali, Balor, and Ricochet really sacrificed their backs for some cool moments tonight, all of them taking multiple back bumps onto ladders, onto the floor, and onto unbudging tables. Ricochet taking a mammoth hip toss from McIntyre, from the ring through a ladder set up at ringside really made this feel like we were getting an ECW match with 3 Spike Dudleys. Corbin is pretty good as modern Justin Credible, pushed cartoon rat faced heel who has been shaving his head for hairline reasons since late 20s getting a ton of go away heat. I would have preferred an actual finish with the guys involved, since really everybody here absolutely busted their ass and someone deserved some credit for that. But I also love Brock more than most people so I can't deny that I think he's a fun guy to be running around threatening to cash in briefcase. What an absolutely scary monster in the closet, knowing that Lesnar could run out at any time to potentially concuss someone! This match played a lot more like something you'd see on a dirty indy show, everyone taking some impressive risks and the fans really getting into it. This show desperately needed to go out on an exciting note, and this match delivered that.

PAS: This had a pretty amusing structure with all four juniors taking enormous disgusting bumps, while the three heavyweights just pinball them around. I mean Orton takes about 10 minutes of this match completely off, I wouldn't be shocked if he went to take a shit or grab a cup of coffee, and meanwhile Ali dies five hideous deaths and Balor nearly snaps his back in half. It almost felt like this was booked as a rib by Kevin Nash. In that sense Brock running in and winning the match while taking zero bumps works perfectly.  Hell of a career shortening bumpfest performance by Ali, Balor, Andrade and Ricochet, and those are super athletic guys to die in interesting ways. I am pretty tired of ladder matches, but can't hate the hustle.

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I Forgot WWE Money in the Bank Was Today Blog! 5/19/19

Got it in my head that this thing was happening next weekend, went on a nice jog during the breaks in the rain, hot shower, cozy pants, sitting down with coffee and Phil texts me if I'm gonna write up the PPV. Crap. I had been planning on watching a Death Wish sequel, a couple Beyond matches, and the Schitt's Creek finale I've been saving...but let's dive in blindly to Money in the Bank!

Daniel Bryan/Erick Rowan vs. The Usos

ER: Pretty genuinely surprised that this wound up on the pre-show. Now, I don't actually know what the rest of this card is (been only skimming through TV the past several weeks, and now that I'm watching it's more fun to just see what happens), so maybe it will knock my socks off! And this whole thing delivered the usually fun pre-show match quality, but with these guys it should have been way better than that. It was good, it was fun, but it really wasn't that much more fun than if we had gotten a Mojo Rawley/No Way Jose 8 minute match. The timing looked just slightly off throughout, things like one of the Usos leaping far out of the way to set up Bryan catching him in an armbar, or Bryan arriving at the edge of the ropes and having to wait a split second to be hit by the double superkick, Usos double splash finish looking ugly with both guys landing more on their feet than landing the splash, just felt like a lot of this was worked at 75%. There were cool moments - hard not to be with these guys - and Bryan pretty clearly looks like the best wrestler in the company right now. I liked Rowan catching both of the Usos on dives, thought each Uso took a nice big bump, but this underdelivered expectations from these four.

Naomi vs. Carmella vs. Nikki Cross vs. Mandy Rose vs. Ember Moon vs. Dana Brooke vs. Natalya vs. Bayley

ER: Everybody has new gear which is cool as I don't even remember people having notably cool new gear at Mania. Was their seamstress running behind? Naomi in the afro puffs and bumblebee look is fantastic, she pulls it off so well. I really, really love that gear and look on her. And Carmella is finally out of the Baywatch swimsuit and into a money two piece. This whole match is somewhat sloppy, a little disjointed, but they went for a ton of shit, tried out some cool new shit, and tried to be a little unique with the concept. Not all of the spots worked, some of them felt way too choreographed (stuff like Carmella holding the ladder too long waiting for Mandy to kick her knee out (and the extremely awkward aftermath of that spot, with Carmella weirdly shoving her away with one arm and saying "get away from meeeee" like they were two kids play fighting and one actually got hurt), or Dana Brooke reaching right over the briefcase to grab the rope because the spot was for her to swing from it, that stuff never looks good and I hate when we see the end of the sequence telegraphed by the process. But the painful stuff was painful and the cool stuff was cool. Mandy Rose took a couple big nasty bumps, one over the top to the apron to the floor, the other getting kicked off a ladder; Sonya Deville came in to fireman's carry Mandy up the ladder, and that looked awesome; Ember hit the Eclipse off a ladder into the ring, Nikki does a nice version of Finlay's ring skirt trap beatdown, Naomi took a painful as hell atomic drop bump on a ladder, Mandy ran up a set up ladder to hit a knee in the end, tons of cool stuff. Overall I thought it was too mapped out and a little messy, but it was an appropriate length, and fun! And Bayley could make for a fun title chaser.

Rey Mysterio vs. Samoa Joe

ER: Man are we ever gonna actually get a total badass match between these two? This is a genuine dream match and we've gotten a pointless Mania match, a rushed Raw match, and now an even more rushed PPV match. This was more angle than match, with Joe getting legit busted open by a shot and then getting pinned fairly quickly while his shoulder was nowhere close to the match. It's pretty lame to have them both wildly celebrating a late career Mysterio title win, while also getting thoughtful Michael Cole voice saying "You now Samoa Joe has a legitimate beef about that pin." This match needed Dominick to take a real shit kicking. Instead we got Cole saying weird things like "He's making Rey's teenage son watch his father get beat!" First, Mysterio's large ass adult son has to be in his 20s by now, old enough to foolishly run in to help his dad. We've had Miz's dad eat a beating, Dominick needs to get busted open. If you don't want to have Dominick eating a beating on the same show where that happened in a different feud, then what is the point of even debuting Dominick at this point? What we got of a match was fine, these two are nice dance partners, but we just didn't have the time to make it very interesting.

Shane McMahon vs. The Miz

ER: I really enjoyed their Mania match, thought the stunt spots were genuinely nutty and built too nicely. Having them fight in a cage kind of contains the stunt aspect more than I'd like, but they bring good energy to this. Shane is a fun stuntman, but here he shows that he's a fun cornered animal. I was fully expecting him to work a fully equal match, because for whatever reason Shane is always treated like an equal. But here he comes in playing desperate strategy, scrambling for escape any way he can. I do like the moments where he can't help himself but always pays for it, even if Miz catching him on the coast to coast was kind of awkward. Miz unleashing actual punishment was really good, with Cole calling him a sadist (which is a weird thing to have your announcer saying about your babyface who isn't doing a heel turn) as he beats Shane with a chair. I was hoping they'd end it like this, with Miz getting some revenge and dropping him face first on a chair. But they opted to go a pretty stupid route instead, as they apparently think the hot way to draw fans into this PPV is some refs making mistakes! The ref stops the match when Shane gets his foot on the ropes, even though it's a No DQ cage match. Two matches in a row where a ref mistake changes the outcome of a match is just stupid, uninteresting, and lazy. That Shane eventually wins the match by dropping to the floor, ensuring the feud continues, was not what I wanted. This started very promising but didn't go in a direction anybody could have wanted.

Tony Nese vs. Ariya Daivari

ER: Damn this feels like a couple deep cut guys on the roster to be getting PPV time. I don't really have the time to watch 205 Live, but damn what is the state of that program? Tony Nese really stinks. This whole thing is ice cold (possibly by design) and Nese doesn't help any one soul in the building get warm. His prepared combos are so sloppy and shitty looking, he runs through this awful high kick/kneelift, leg sweep, leg drop combo that is so slow, and manages to look shittier literally each step of the way through the combo. Daivari has a couple more interesting things than I remembered. I liked his jab and a couple of his cheapshots, but he doesn't have anything interesting enough to make the crowd care about Tony Nese. We do eventually get a Boring chant, and it's stupid but not undeserved. Nese doesn't deserve cheers for his shitty elbow exchanges and slow kicks, all delivered with absolutely zero personality. Nese is such a zilch. Fans at least make a little noise for his flip dive and 450, but I actually laughed when it got a kickout. These guys are going for This Is Awesome Please Don't Stop epic without earning one damn ounce of it. I hate it but I kind of love it. The finishing stretch was nonsensical and cut short right when they decided to do some silly kickouts. Really this whole thing showed that neither of these guys are anywhere close to deserving PPV time. This was outright bad.

Lacey Evans vs. Becky Lynch

ER: I really have not been into any of the Lacey Evans stuff we've gotten so far, so this is a decent chance for her to win me over. I think I'm still upset that we never got the culmination of this exact same run for Eva Marie. I wasn't expecting any good matches from that, but I got a genuine kick out of the Eva Maria stuff. And Lacey looks if not great, interesting. Her arm work was nice, whipping Becky's arm into the match, wrapping it around a post, stomping on the wrist, kneeing the elbow, all of those are cool things. She threw a hard elbowdrop to the stomach, overall a nice attack. The crowd doesn't really seem to buy into her game though, and it makes for some pretty quiet control segments. Perhaps worse, is that Lacey doesn't eat a babyface beating very well. She is really stiff - not in a cool strikes kind of way, stiff as in "kind of a lug" - who doesn't bump excitedly for explosive offense, kinda just clunks her way over on big dropkicks, and always seems just slightly out of position. The finishing sequence building to the Disarm-her was messy and unconvincing, with another bizarrely out of place ref leading to the sequence looking even uglier than it should have. Was this a case of "refs call it like a shoot and the shoulder wasn't down" or have they not been instructing the refs to act like it's a shoot for a decade? This whole PPV has felt both cursed and like a curse over the past hour.

Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte

ER: This could be a nice way to turn our misfortune around. This overall feud has had some unfortunate detours and misdirections, and has been a disappointment, but it still has high ceiling potential and it's always a possibility one of the matches could reach that ceiling. It doesn't really get to that ceiling, and is also kind of a dull mess. There were also several moments where one of them intentionally or unintentionally flinched out of the way of important strikes, so you got a few moments of sold strikes that ate a ton of air, including the kick that literally ended the match. That stuff is ugly as hell and the wrestlers need to be given the confidence to call audibles more often. The match didn't work to any interesting peak moments, was not memorable, and then it ALSO turns out it's even more of an angle than a match, as we get the full fan requested Bayley run in complete with her cashing in the briefcase.

Charlotte vs. Bayley

ER: This was at least memorable for the fans' legit large pop for the quick Bayley win. It would be a real kick if Bayley suddenly got a groundswell of support the way fans suddenly took to Kofi. I would love if the end result of all of this fairly botched Becky/Charlotte feud is Bayley becoming as popular as Becky was a year ago. Bayley running through the crowd was a genuinely fun moment.

Elias vs. Roman Reigns

ER: You guys I really don't like this PPV and I definitely would rather be listening to the angular guitar synth sounds of Jimmy Page while Paul Kersey takes down a sect of LA new wave gutter punks. I am starting to resent the PPV a little at this point. "Big Dog" Commentary Count: 3

AJ Styles vs. Seth Rollins

ER: This was not the match I was hoping for, when I was hoping for my luck to turn around. AJ has been a noticeable step down over the past year, and Rollins is arguably my least favorite guy on the roster. This just wasn't the match I wanted. It's a match that I'm very tired of. We haven't really seen these two in a match, but that's not what I'm mean, I mean that I'm tired of these Seth Rollins style fitness routine epics. This stuff is such soulless junk, I always wind up totally zoned out 5 minutes in. There were things that looked cool: AJ sets up a nutso piledriver off the apron and Rollins drops hard to his escape, Rollins hits his dive a little more recklessly (not as daintily) as he can, stuff like that. We get an actually AWESOME reverse suplex off the top, with Rollins whipping Styles with a low arc, making it look like AJ bounced right off his face. It was great and infinitely cooler than any other piece of Rollins' offense. So naturally it was used as a mid-match nearfall surprise. The missed and hit superkick tradeoffs look as silly and overdone as they usually look, and "The Beast Slayer! Looking to burn it down!" is so cringe that I don't even know if Manowar could make that sound cool. It certainly doesn't sound cool when describing Seth Rollins. This may have been a good version of "this match". It didn't go anywhere deep into overkill, even if I thought the layout was boring and predictable. That makes it at least an above average version of this match, but I'm tired of this song.

Lucha House Party vs. Lars Sullivan

ER: Pretty sure this match was booked as a Vince dogwhistle to trump showing he fully supports the burgeoning market of white guys with questionable tweets pushed too far and taking the matter of getting rid of brown people into his own hands.

Kevin Owens vs. Kofi Kingston

ER: I'm not expecting to really enjoy the "not against Daniel Bryan" portions of Kofi's title run, but we'll see. I don't have much skin in either of these guys, so it's tough for me to get into this, but they do well with the time they're given. Owens superkicking Kofi out of the sky on a big plancha to the floor looked cool, Owens took a big double stomp on the apron, Owens takes a big upside down bump in the corner and drops on his his, and more. This does continue the unfortunate trend of the night of every single match having an absolute dogshit do si do reversal sequence that looks like slow mo play fighting. Those sequences are really bugging me tonight, so things weren't perfect here. But it's probably the best match on the show since the MITB women's match, and that wasn't a particularly high bar.

Baron Corbin vs. Finn Balor vs. Ricochet vs. Andrade vs. Ali vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton

ER: Within the first two minutes of this, Andrade takes a gorgeous Jerry bump, Ali gets backdropped on a table, Balor gets backdropped on a table, Ricochet hits a springboard 450 to the floor, and Ricochet gets backdropped on a table. This match feels like it knows it can definitively be the best of the night. They do a lot of big things here, and it consistently looks good and painful. Ali and Ricochet both eat backdrops onto ladders, and Andrade spectacularly springboard dropkicks Orton off a ladder. This has been a night where agents have laid out some real clunkers, so guys stepping in and having one of those fun WWE Heavyweight X Division matches is going to come off even better. WWE has a decent history of being able to do a "many guys chaining together offense" multiman, and this played like one of the good ones. Andrade hitting a sunset flip powerbomb on Finn off a ladder through another ladder - Andrade landing on his feet and Finn recoiling like a skinny kid getting bounced off a trampoline by two fat kids - was one of the most spectacular WWE spots of the last decade. That was WWE stealing the brilliant insanity from the Crazy Crusher vs. Hell Storm Canadian backyard ladder match. Ali, Balor, and Ricochet really sacrificed their backs for some cool moments tonight, all of them taking multiple back bumps onto ladders, onto the floor, and onto unbudging tables. Ricochet taking a mammoth hip toss from McIntyre, from the ring through a ladder set up at ringside really made this feel like we were getting an ECW match with 3 Spike Dudleys. Corbin is pretty good as modern Justin Credible, pushed cartoon rat faced heel who has been shaving his head for hairline reasons since late 20s getting a ton of go away heat. I would have preferred an actual finish with the guys involved, since really everybody here absolutely busted their ass and someone deserved some credit for that. But I also love Brock more than most people so I can't deny that I think he's a fun guy to be running around threatening to cash in briefcase. What an absolutely scary monster in the closet, knowing that Lesnar could run out at any time to potentially concuss someone! This match played a lot more like something you'd see on a dirty indy show, everyone taking some impressive risks and the fans really getting into it. This show desperately needed to go out on an exciting note, and this match delivered that.

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Ronda vs. Nia

14. Ronda Rousey vs. Nia Jax WWE Money in the Bank 6/17

PAS: I was actually pretty optimistic about Ronda as a pro wrestler, MMA is a pretty great base for wrestling, and folks like Bas Rutten, Shayna Bayzler and Dokonjonsuke Mishima were pretty great from the jump. The ways she is so good are pretty surprising though. I was expecting some cool Judo throws (and we got some awesome ones here), and maybe even some big bumps (and there were those too), but I was blown away by how good she already was at the little things which separate cool wrestlers from great ones. I loved how the match started with Jax overwhelming her with power and size, and how good Ronda was as reacting to that. A big part of the story of the match was conveyed in her facial reactions, she did a great job appearing overwhelmed, and she was awesome when she got her confidence and went to work. I loved her going to the top rope, almost falling off and steeling herself and hitting the bodypress. I think her martial arts experience makes her super compelling at working holds, no one would ever lay in a hold in a Judo contest or MMA fight and she doesn't every stope moving in a wrestling match,  every time she is placed in a hold or applies one she is constantly fighting for an advantage or a counter. Her battle out of the bearhug was one of my favorite spots of the year, and her attacking the arm was full of cool little adjustments. We are high voters on Nia Jax on SC, and this was a hell of a performance from her too, she was great at making everything look violent and I loved her arrogance, this is her sport and she wasn't going to allow an interloper to take her title.  Ronda has such a built in history with the armbar that even a tease of it gets a huge reaction, and I loved how the final fight for it was worked. Of course we can't have good things, and they do a stupid Money in the Bank cash in, and Ronda and Nia have to sell for mini who can barely lift a briefcase. I actually think Alexa can be effective in the ring, but having such a physical, athletically impressive match derailed by someone so tiny and unimposing really was dissonant, are we really supposed to buy Nia being pinned by that splash? Hornswoggle wasn't ending title matches.

ER: Fully agree with Phil here on just how surprised and impressed I am with the ways Rousey has excelled. We've now seen several MMA transitions and they all have the body language and the air of legitimacy, and we've seen some really quick learners (Riddle and Baszler recently, but we can also look at the New Japan Russians from 30 years ago as crossover quick learners). But what I wasn't expecting from Ronda is her being so great with timing, with selling, and most importantly has a range of facial characteristics that I wasn't expecting. There are people who I think are decent wrestlers who have been doing this for many years, who still get that look in their eyes that they're trying their best to remember what's coming next, to think about where they have to be standing, to remember what major note to hit next, and she just comes off so natural. I knew she had potential to be good, I didn't actually think she would be this good, this quick. Her move execution is great, her selling and reactions are great, but I love that she still has the stiffness of a celebrity Raw guest host when she takes offense. She exudes tons of confidence when she's dishing out shots, but there are also moments where she feels like Kevin Federline about to take an FU, and that's awesome. I'm always surprised when I see us as the high vote on Nia. I think people just hate her voice. I don't know, I think she's a great powerhouse who can believably work in drama for smaller opponents. She's a big bumper, but doesn't just fly around doing fast back bumps for anything, instead saving them for big cascading tumbles that open up her vulnerability.

I loved all the offense in this, loved the structure of Nia just powering through painful shots to land big wrestling moves. Ronda's strikes all looked great, loved her punch flurries, and she was so smart about throwing in little things to avoid dead time, like when they were both on the mat close to each other, and Ronda threw a grounded kick to Nia's back. That kind of thing reminds me of when someone wouldn't be too quick getting back to their feet and Finlay would stomp on their fingers. I thought Nia sold the shots well, absorbing at first but later the same shots thrown the same way had a bigger effect. At one point Ronda hit a right to the body that staggered and dropped Nia to a knee, allowing Ronda to leap with a high knee to the jaw. The whole sequence looked great, from both women. Nia's power offense was awesome, a big bear huge (which Coachman idiotically said was great for Ronda to rest during. Why the fuck is this guy here again?), press slams, avalanches, and a couple big Samoan drops, aiming to squish Ronda like a bug. Nia throws one of the favorite legdrops in wrestling, and I liked how the missed legdrop was used to give Ronda an opening here. Ronda is crazy with the punishment she takes, and I noticed myself leaned way forward on the couch while they were fighting on the floor, Ronda awesomely trying a rana before Nia swung her about as violently as you can swing someone into a barricade. I loved the work around the arm, thought Nia was great at showing how desperate she was to keep those hands clasped, loved how she slyly fed Ronda her arm after missing a corner charge, loved the zoom in on her hands slowly getting unclasped (though it would have felt even bigger had I not seen a great version of that exact same thing the night before on NXT), and maybe I'm wrong but as they were fighting through what would have surely been the match finish armbar it looked like Nia was trying to muscle out of it by holding her arms and leaning forward with her weight, trying to break Ronda's grip the way Zampano would break an iron chain across his chest.

I expected a not clean finish, but had less of a problem with Bliss' performance than Phil. She is obviously not as physical as Ronda or Nia, but I thought she was really effective swinging that briefcase, and I didn't see it as her having a hard time lifting it, it felt like she was giving it some weight to pay off the shots. John Cena was always really great at giving the ring steps weight, always losing his footing in a different way when picking them up. That briefcase probably weighs 3 pounds tops, but the way Bliss was throwing her whole body into shots, swinging the edges into Nia's arm and plastering Ronda, really made it feel bigger. I buy the Twisted Bliss finishing, as Nia's focus was solely on her arm, which set up a big DDT before the splash, and no matter how big you are it's going to smart when 100 pounds gets dropped on you.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Money in the Bank 2017 Not Live Blog

I was up at my folks' place swimming all day today (it's 108 degrees here right now) so got home as the PPV was finishing, still thought I would do a write up.

1. The Colons vs. Hype Bros.

ER: PPV Pre show delivers again, these guys all have that 8 minute pre show timing down. Colons are a really good team and I'm glad they stick around. Epico has chubbed up a bit and that just makes me love him more. They craft some nice stuff around taking apart Ryder's leg, I always like the ankle DDT spot. Mojo has a decent hot tag and things peak right at the finish, with Mojo hitting lariats and shoulderblocks and absolutely splatting one of the Colons, which lead to a nice last split second save. Ryder comes in limping and hits a nasty broski boot and gets crazy height on the rough ryder leg drop lariat. This was a fine opener.

2. Money in the Bank Ladder Match: Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch vs. Tamina vs. Carmella vs. Natalya

ER: Tamina has the least flattering ring gear possible. It looks like they took Viscera's old gear and hemmed it. Rachel thinks Charlotte needs to wear some sort of short skirt with her gear, as she finds Charlotte's lack of hips distracting. I'm digging the early parts of this, nice basic ladder stuff. Charlotte nastily bulldogs Tamina into a ladder, Becky and Natalya ram a ladder into her stomach, nice ladder as weapon stuff. Loved Carmella trapping Charlotte's leg in the ladder and lobbing back elbows. Becky climbs a ladder seemingly just to get rana'd off by Carmella. Carmella leans out of a Charlotte yakuza kick. Charlotte takes a sick bump off the ladder from a nice Tamina headbutt. That spear spot right after could not have been uglier. They don't go through, then take forever to continue unnaturally falling to the floor. Tamina takes a nice backwards bump over some ring steps. And my oh my that match finish is incredibly uninspired. "Women can do anything!" Except that one woman needs to help of the literal lowest man on the WWE totem pole to win. And the crowd was clearly expecting things to get reversed or the result thrown out, and it drug on for awhile, and it never got thrown out. This was not very good, that ending felt like it came way early. Even if they wanted this specific finish, they could have done it while making Carmella look better, have her ordering Ellsworth to run distraction for her while she climbs for the case. Something.

3. New Day vs. Usos

ER: Heel Usos are awesome, love Big E, and Kofi bumps his way crazily into my heart by going high and fast to the floor off an Uso low bridge, then gets leveled by an Uso lariat. Usos really ragdoll Kofi around and I have high hopes for this Big E hot tag (earlier he hit his awesome apron splash), and the Usos keep cutting that damn ring off. The hot tag itself was fun, E hits three big belly to bellys, and the spear to the floor is still nutso. Kofi and an Uso both go for kicks and get tangled up in kind of a fun way. The end run has a scary moment where E is supposed to catch Jey out of the air to do a powerslam but Jey falls past him and easily could have gone face first into the mat. They awkwardly do the spot as planned, which involves Jey climbing up onto E. But the pinfall save after they finally do the spot is excellent. Things heat up nicely after that, Usos with another big save, Kofi hits a sweet trust fall dive to the floor...and then Usos just leave with the belts and get counted out. Dude. These finishes are making me salty.

4. Naomi vs. Lana

ER: OOF Lana has some all time bad entrance music. It sounds like a song someone took minutes to make in Mario Paint, just a looped drum beat and sax riff. Lana's movements in the ring are somewhat clunky, but I think she's a total win as a sexy crowbar. Her snap suplexes into the ring ropes were killer, and her little crescent kick through the ropes as Naomi was pulling herself up was nice, and I think she's pretty good at occupying herself and selling during Naomi's wrist-held high kicks. I think the Carmella mid match entrance worked, as she's now just looming with the threat of the stupid briefcase, though I think they went to the finish too quick after that, no momentum was built back up. The finishing submission looked good, but the heat went down with the Carmella entrance. I liked Lana in this, think she looked better than Tamina has ever looked.

And Mike Bennett/Maria are now in WWE and get a debut on a PPV? Have they been in NXT or something? Maria as a character has never done a thing for me, but I'm mildly amused at Mike taking her last name. I'll give both of them credit for however they keep getting paid TV gigs, but I'm not too excited to see them work.

5. Jinder Mahal vs. Randy Orton

ER: This all starts off good, both guys are working to not show light on strikes, Orton's stomps looked good, Jinder working as a great overpowering juiced up bully, taunting Orton Sr., throwing on a figure 4 in front of Flair; now I want him to do the Baron's claw and some high Gagne dropkicks. This whole thing progressed nicely and then hit a way-too-long Singh Bros. removal...but then we get Orton recklessly throwing them around again (slightly less reckless than last month), and in keeping with the bad finish theme of this show, that insanely long Singh Bros. interlude then leads to Orton losing the match the exact same way he lost the last match. I mean everything played out almost exactly the same. This match started quite good and then went the way of the others. This isn't that good of a show.

6. Breezango vs. Ascension

ER: Dude the Ascension are guys getting in on main show PPV matches!! What a truly unexpected match on this show. I watch Smackdown, have they even been on in the last month? Well, no matter, I actually like Vikto and he confirms my like by hitting a cool jumping knee to Breeze. Breeze takes offense really great, he'll lean up into an elbowdrop and take fast bumps to the floor, sell your resthold for you. Connor also wins me over by having huge muttonchops and hitting a fucking boss spinebuster. Weird match to show up on a PPV, but both teams looked good.

7. Money in the Bank Ladder Match: AJ Styles vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens vs.  Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Baron Corbin

ER: Big spots to start, Corbin working stiff, and I finally got invested when Dolph ran up a ladder to the ring apron to swipe AJ's legs in the middle of a springboard, like his own stupid ladder Hamburger Hill. I'm so sick of Zayn and Owens matching up, but Zayn at least will take a couple stupid bumps in a big (or small) match. Styles is out of this for too long as when he comes back in you suddenly realize that the energy of that match had been missing. Styles immediately makes the match more interesting, and Dolph awesomely climbs OVER Corbin on the ladder. And Dolph kind of continues worming his way back into my good graces by punching Zayn a bunch right in the fucking ear, while on the top of a ladder. And huge props to him for somehow taking the safest possible bump off a sunset flip powerbomb off said ladder. I mean that as a genuine compliment, the bump looked nasty but you could tell he took it right. It's a good skill. We somehow get a fucking nalf nelson suplex head drop ON THE RING APRON on a WWE PPV. WWE is now a 2001 Dateline NBC Backyard Wrestling highlight package. I now want them to do a tailbone shattering guillotine legdrop off Zayn's stepmom's house. I want Owens to give Zayn a burning hammer on a public park picnic table. Styles is really good at leaping off of ropes and crashing into people. He has precision "crash into stuff" skills. Styles leaping into that chokeslam was great, and Corbin plants him with one. Owens takes a Styles death valley driver off the apron through a set up ladder and holy shit all these guys are insane. This is a fucking amazing IWA Mid-South match right here. Dolph pulls the ladder out from AJ and AJ does all these great "hanging from the case" spots, trying to climb to his safety, trying to get over it for leverage to unhook the case, hanging from the case itself and scrambling to yank it down instead of unhook it; it felt like a bunch of cool tricks that Bill Dundee would work into a gimmick match. Nakamura finally comes back after being jumped pre-bell, and in a cool moment the fans continue singing his entrance music when it gets cut off, and he runs wild with a fresh man hot tag. He throws knees, boots Dolph in the face on a corner charge, kicks more face, knees Owens in the face, does enough in 1 minute to make me blow up. AJ and Nak get a cool little action movie stand off that made both seem like major guys, peering through the ladder at each other like Travolta and Cage in FaceOff. Great fistfight at the top of the ladder with those two...and then Baron Corbin wins it. Wow. Did not expect that...but I like it! Corbin coming out and taunting the champ with the case, playing mind games, would actually give him something to do instead of "This guy is in a bad mood!"

Overall the PPV wasn't a great one. It wasn't really even a good one. But that MITB match was really damn fun to me and felt like something I would see on a 2002 Jersey indy comp tape. And that makes me happy as hell. I wanted the buffering on my Network feed to fuck up so it would look like I was watching the match on a scratched 12th gen VHS dupe. And that ended things on an impossibly joy-filled mood, so thumbs up!

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WWE Money in the Bank 2016 Live Blog

So to start the live blog, I'd like to address an extremely embarrassing and unfortunate coincidence. A few days ago I needed something to post for that day (still somehow keeping up with our post-per-day minimum almost two and a half years later) but I was at work that day and leaving directly from work to go to a concert in Oakland (John Carpenter LIVE!!! My god), so wasn't going to be able to write anything new. So I scoured my drafts for something and found several Jerry Lawler reviews that I had written 3+ years ago. I read them through, they seemed quality, so I posted a couple. The next day - to my horror - I went on PWO for the first time in a couple days and immediately saw a thread about Jerry Lawler being suspended indefinitely under accusations of domestic violence, news that would have been broken BEFORE I posted those reviews. Yeesh. So I just want to make it clear that I WAS NOT taking any sort of stance, no silent support for Lawler, nothing weird. I was just "lucky" enough to post something about him the same day as the news came out. I could have posted those damn reviews any day over the last three years, but I just happened to need content on the day THAT news breaks. Good grief. So, if for some reason anybody out there was icked out by my poorly timed Lawler post - and to be clear not one person to my knowledge has accused me of doing anything untoward - but if for some reason there is a reader out there who thought I was being gross, please know that it was just an unfortunate coincidence.

ER: I just received a text alert from WWE stating "The greatest Money in the Bank event in history starts NOW!" WOW!! The greatest PPV on the greatest night in the history of our great sport!?!? How can I afford to NOT watch and write about this!?

1. The Golden Truth vs. Breezango

ER: Breezango are working an extreme sunburning gimmick, playing up that they got roasted earlier while tanning their bods. This leads to Goldust amusingly working a chop heavy style while Breeze and Fandango scream. Goldust throws some amazing chops all throughout so it works, and for speaking for all the people who have ever lobstered themselves, you get it. The match wasn't much beyond that sadly. Goldust got to be the hot tag, which is nice since he's easily the best hot tag in the fed, but I wish I could just see an actual 8+ minute match between these teams.

2. Lucha Dragons vs. Dudley Boyz

ER: "Game of Thrones isn't the only show with flying dragons!" Ugh, Mauro's had that line in the can for weeks I assume. There are also ads on the bottom of the screen FOR the Money in the Bank PPV. How many people who subscribe to the Network, who happen to be watching the network LIVE at 4:47 PM on a Sunday, wouldn't know they are about to see Money in the Bank? There was a production person in the back who was paid to put these graphics up on the bottom of the screen. The only way they could be watching this match was if they clicked the large "Watch WWE Money in the Bank LIVE NOW" button on the homepage. These teams don't seem to gel very well, and the Dragons seem to be holding back on their flying offense. Everything is landing super soft. Bubba is still good but has lost a step, but he's doing a good job of trying to make up for any ability loss with an increase in shit talking. It works. But yeah the match as a whole really doesn't. The heat segments aren't compelling, the comebacks are light. There were a couple decent individual moments, but this was a throwaway pre-show match for certain.

3. Enzo & Cass vs. The Vaudevillains vs. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson vs. The New Day

ER: Love the new waistcoat/vest/pocket watch entrance gear on the Villains. Entrances take a full 9 minutes for everybody so I magically leap forward in time. Anderson and Gallows have to wait almost that long as Enzo and Kofi set up dual crossbodies off the top. There's an annoying segment where Kofi and Enzo do a tug of war, each trying to tag out to their partners. So just a long segment of two guys just not fighting each other, while holding hands. Neat. Things "break down" just 4 minutes in, despite next to nothing happening. Kofi is really sandbagging the Villains. Anderson seems to be the only one who understands that it's a one pinfall finish, as he tries to tag guys whenever they get close. Kofi and English were fighting right next to Enzo and Cass and they just stood there thumbing their butts. Can't win the match from the apron, doodz. Cass and Enzo go on a run and Gallows looks late on a save, plus the ref did a bad double clutch count. Looked bad. They wisely have English take most of the finishers, as that guy is really good at taking offense. The last two minutes of this got good as WWE multiman structure is usually good at handling those big finisher trading runs, but this really wasn't that good for the time allotted.

ER: I really liked Owens during the MITB promo, even though they were just going for yuks instead of actually building to much of a match. "Perro means dog? You know Spanish now?" "No, I just learned that word because [Alberto Del Rio] always calls people that."

4. Baron Corbin vs. Dolph Ziggler

ER: When did the "super wet hair" scourge start sweeping through WWE? When did that start being a thing? Was it HHH? Is he the Wet Hair Mary? Did he start demanding everybody with hair just dunk their heads under a sink pre-match? Even Flair has been horribly sporting this look for years now, which only adds to his incredible melting man look. Let's all get together and try to pinpoint this wet hair outbreak. Corbin's work looks really good in this. I like his measured straight rights, even if the crowd is chanting boring at him. Did I miss something with Ziggler? Why is he wearing what appears to be an actual HBK outfit from 1996? That's weird, right? I get guys wearing their influences on their sleeves, but just dressing exactly the same? How is that even allowed? Ziggler takes a hot shot really great, really looked like his neck snapped across that rope. Also really like Corbin being a step ahead and countering all of Ziggler's offense, tossing him off from the famouser, blocking the follow up superkick. Oh god Ziggler is even stomping to set up sweet chin music? What the fuck did I miss? What a fucking dork. Corbin plants him with a nasty spinning back suplex, really twisting him right into the ground. I'm really starting to love all of Corbin's running punches, and I liked the superkick reversal off Corbin's finisher. I think Corbin might be quite good, but it's tough to tell since I've only ever seen him against Ziggler and even though I ended up liking this match, it's a match-up I'm already tired of.

5. Charlotte & Dana Brooke vs. Becky Lynch & Natalya

ER: I really liked Charlotte's knees/cravate combo on Natalya, but there is really not much to care about in this match. Becky's hot tag offense doesn't look that good. After seeing her a few times I still can't get any sort of read on Brooke. She seems good at doing lackey type stuff, bitchily making saves for Charlotte, but nothing has stood out about her wrestling ability. Lynch doesn't do a lot for me either. Brooke does make me laugh postmatch by yelling "I'm the greatest protege ever!!" That's awesome. Oh and hey Nattie turned on Lynch, meaning there are......is Lynch the only babyface in the division? Paige is a face, right? I think? Nattie's forearm to the back of Lynch's head was probably the best looking thing in the match. This was a bunch of nothing.

6. Sheamus vs. Apollo Crews

ER: Crews doesn't do a lot for me but Sheamus is good enough to get something out of him, and they oddly seem like a good match for each other. I really really dug all the violent opening headlock takeovers, they all looked so good. Crews throws a nice tight elbow that knocks Sheamus to the floor and Sheamus snags him off the apron and hits a backbreaker. And I am into this. Sheamus knows how to work a compelling headlock as he keeps shifting his weight and position to build for Crews' comeback. Sheamus is really good bumping all around for Crews' lariats, and then takes a wild bump to the floor off a belly to belly. Holy cow then Crews hits an awesome moonsault off the apron to the floor, that really couldn't have hit any better than it did. Man I am into this match. Crowd appears to not give any one of their fucks about it, but they're busting ass in there. It's really quiet though. Can't blame them though as Sheamus really has been an afterthought for some time. Which is too bad, as Sheamus is awesome. OOF, lame as hell finish with Crews just getting a roll up while Sheamus argued pinfalls. Man that is a lame finish. Shame as I was into the whole thing, up until that.

7. AJ Styles vs. John Cena

ER: Cole on commentary also calls this "The greatest Money in the Bank event in history!" What is the actual justification for using this exact phrasing. It's a weird thing to say about a show before it happens, and then again before it's over. Is there a kayfabe reason? Like are they acting like the matches on this card are the biggest ever when compared to past MITB? Or is it just hyperbolic horseshit? Cena looks smaller, which is good. He was looking freakish for awhile there. And this is really good so far. I loved Styles punching him when Cena waved his palm, and Cena selling that punch was great. On the floor AJ gets tossed into the steps but ably leaps over them and then casually rolls back into the ring and man Styles is playing this up so great. Styles pacing in this match is perfect, and then AJ gets launched by a backdrop. But the structure kinda falls apart after that backdrop. And then Styles hits a plancha where...I didn't really know what was supposed to hit whom. It looked like AJ changed his momentum to purposely not hit Cena, but then Cena sold it. Styles does crash and burn spectacularly on a missed dive afterwards though. Boy the pace I enjoyed so much at the start of the match sure has turned quite methodical. Cena is working like he's hurt, not in selling injuries, but just in a way that feels like he's not fully healthy. We have hit the part of the match where finishers are hit followed by lots of lying around. Styles catches knees on a 450, which is probably because he waited 90 seconds to hit it after Cena kicked out of the Styles Clash. And more lying around. I'm all for selling, but they're not laying this thing out in a very interesting way.  A ref bump was not something I was personally hoping for, either. Club interferes, puts AJ on top for the win. At least AJ won? I'm sure they will have several matches so I understand not doing a good finish in the first match, but the final 5-7 minutes of this were just really boring to me. It felt like they were going for drama that they hadn't earned. The long lying around selling followed by getting up and running around felt like the worst terceras of the worst CMLL main events. Both of these guys are good, and I'm sure they have a real good match in them. This started out like that match, but it wasn't that match by the end.

8. Money in the Bank Match: Chris Jericho vs. Cesaro vs. Sami Zayn vs. Alberto Del Rio vs. Kevin Owens vs. Dean Ambrose

ER: Jericho is doing some of the more interesting character stuff than at any time over the last several years, but his ringwork has gotten so lousy, and he hasn't adapted his style in the least, that it makes me just hope he decides to stop wrestling. He just looks so slow and bad in there. There are some big moves to start, but also notice that everybody taking the big moves is REALLY bad at occupying themselves while waiting to take a move. Jericho just stands there holding a ladder forever while waiting for Cesaro to hit his senton off the apron, 4 guys just stand at ringside patiently waiting for Zayn to hit a flip dive, they just aren't even pretending they're doing anything other than waiting to get hit. Cesaro hits running uppercuts on everybody and Sami Zayn has been gone for like 5 minutes. Owens too. Ah, now Owens comes in a hits cannonballs on everybody, and then Cesaro takes a nasty running face first bump into a ladder set up in the corner.  I'm not sure what possibly kept Zayn hurt for so many minutes, because when he reappears he is a house of fire. But pretty soon we're back to 4 guys disappeared and selling injuries off camera. Man you expect that kind of stuff in these but it seems really bad here. But holy cow Cesaro jumping from the ladder into a springboard uppercut looked amazing. We do get plenty of big moves into ladders, but the layout with guys just waiting around doing nothing until it's their turn to do a stunt is just out of control. I get it, shit hurts. But the way they're playing it you can literally predict who's turn it is to come in and take their turn to do something painful.  I've only missed one of my guesses so far. We take a preposterously long time to set up all 6 guys fighting while standing on ladders. ADR takes a flat out lunatic bump off a falling ladder, trying to land feet first on the top and basically doing a split legged moonsault to himself. We get many minutes of guys failing to climb well, until Ambrose climbs better than them to win! Well, this stunk.

9. Rusev vs. Titus O'neil

ER: Lana's faces while standing behind Rusev are the best. And Rusev and Titus smack into each other really hard to start, and Rusev gets tossed into the barricade. Before long Rusev is smothering him in the ring while trash talking Titus's kids. Rusev throws a lot of really good knees. Rusev's high kick and superkick both look great, Titus looks like he's scared of tearing a lat most times he does a move. And WOW Rusev won clean in the middle on Father's Day in front of Titus's kids!! Holy cow, they brought in his kids to watch their dad lose!! That's vicious shit right there. Happy Fathers Day!!! Rusev couldn't have looked much stronger in victory. He mostly steamrolled Titus here. Back down the card you go, O'Neill. Shouldn't have touched Vince that one time.

10. Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns

ER: According to chants, Roman apparently can't wrestle. Which not coincidentally sounds like the feeble screams of hundreds of micropenises. This was worked a little slower than I was hoping for, and I'm still confused who is supposed to be booed and who isn't. Rollins has some pretty light offense here, but there are some nice sequences. Loved Reigns backdropping Rollins, Rollins landing on his feet, but then getting blasted by a Superman punch. Rollins countering a spear with a kneelift was nice too. Rollins is really working as gutsy babyface returning from a knee injury, and the whole announce crew is selling it as such. Except for Byron Saxton, who I swear is just most useless fucking body. The whole PPV all he did was occasionally loudly say somebody's name when it was quiet. It would go quiet and then in an over-annunciated speech you would just hear. "ROMAN...REIGNS." Saxton is such a fucking zero. Those spots where they fight endlessly on the turnbuckles really don't look good. I'm honestly pretty bored during this one. It just feels way too long. Certain sequences feel repeated. Some stuff is looking really impressive, like Reigns brutal missed spear into the rail. The brawling has looked pretty sloppy. The fighting on the knees spot was pretty flimsy, especially after watching Black Terry do an expert version of the same moment earlier in the day. They went out and tried to have an epic war, and there was a lot that worked. I think they should have consolidated things a bit, maybe trimmed like 25% of the match, got to some things quicker. But I do actually like how they handled the ending, as I definitely didn't expect Roman to lose. It seems like such an anti-WWE move to give a guy like Rollins the title after being laid up for 7 months. The Money in the Bank stip does nothing at all for me, but I like that Ambrose immediately cashed it in, as then I won't have to see any stupid months and months of suitcase teases, and a guy dorkily carrying around said suitcase. And it makes the main event scene more interesting than it otherwise would have been with a Reigns win. Maybe I'll have second thoughts after thinking about it for a bit, but this seems like a neat way to freshen things up a bit. And maybe Ambrose will start looking better now that he's away from Jericho, and into actual important programs.

ER: So, I didn't like the PPV. A lot of it was boring. The two big singles matches fell flat with me, and the ladder match was a bunch of guys killing themselves in a stupidly laid out bad spotfest. And the undercard matches weren't really put in a position to succeed. There were individuals I liked, but nothing at all that I really liked. BUT, I'm oddly optimistic about things going forward, as even though I didn't care for the overall matches I'm excited for a Styles/Cena rematch, excited for the various Shield clashes, excited to see different stuff from Corbin and Rusev, so it's an odd feeling to not really enjoy much of what I just watched, while being interested in what's to come. So I guess I couldn't call it a failure.

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WWE Money in the Bank 2015 Live Blog

We've done most of these, and I got some time before watching the Silicon Valley/Veep season finales, so let's do this until I get bored.

1. Wade Barrett vs. R-Truth

ER: Seems like almost anybody who ends up winning KOTR, and then starts dressing like a king, always ends up just completely dead as a character in mere weeks. I think King Regal was the only one I actually enjoyed. I think he's the only one who played it with the proper gravitas. I mean just look at how far this crown has gotten him! He has the honor of appearing on the kickoff show of arguably the 8th most important WWE PPV of the year! Feuding over a crown feels not quite as important as feuding over a really nice parking space, or an upgrade to a first class plane ticket. Those feel like things that the crowd would get more invested in. I can't imagine people caring about a fake crown, but I can see people thinking "Man, more leg room would probably be sweet on a long flight".  That's already getting me interested. But this match felt exactly like a match that took place on a kickoff show. Short match with a commercial break in the middle, literally nothing of note happens. I mean I *just* watched this thing, and remember nothing about it. Great start to the night!

2. Money in the Bank Ladder Match: Randy Orton vs. Neville vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Kane vs. Kofi Kingston vs. Sheamus vs. Roman Reigns

ER: I wish they had Cena and Owens in this match. Seems like that would have more interesting story potential than just immediately rematching them 2 weeks later. This whole briefcase gimmick does nothing for me anymore. It's silly to put it on a face as it makes them look like opportunistic weenies if they cash it in while a guy is weak, but makes them look stupid if they don't. And it's beyond played out to use it as a device to get over a heel. Early on and they might have set the record for "earliest time 5 guys all lie around outside the ring selling death so 2 guys can fight easily inside the ring". Seems like we hit that around the 3 minute mark, just everybody lying around the ring as if they had been through a war. Some people had hardly even taken a bump at that point! This whole thing is one giant mess of 5 people death selling and two people slow climbing. Kofi at one point was selling on the floor for 7 minutes! Cool he put over a nasty powerbomb, but jesus get the doctors after minute #2! Just not enough logical ways to put a guy out of commission for that long. Michael Cole screaming "WILL THIS BE THE BEGINNING OF THE NEVILLE ERA!?!?" made me laugh. "The Neville Era". That sounds so fucking stupid. Eventually Sheamus shows that HE is the greatest climber of them all!! Man this was bad. A couple of good spots, liked Orton pulling Neville off the ladder into an RKO, Kofi getting tossed onto the group looked good, but the amount of selling on the floor was absurd when you think of what moves each individual actually took in the match. Cole is BAFFLED after the match, cannot think of ANY reason why Bray Wyatt would attack Roman Reigns. Yeah, it's a total mystery. These guys have worked together for so long, after all.

3. Nikki Bella vs. Paige

ER: This is pretty easily the best match of the night so far. Paige appears to be working over Nikki's tits as I've seen more than one back elbow straight to a boob. Also dug Paige's weird over the shoulder single leg takedown out of the corner. Nikki has fun offense which she's actually good at executing, and I liked some of the knees and stomps in this. Brie tossing out her boob padding was amusing, and Nikki's KO blow on Paige looked great. Clearly a much more interesting and better laid out match than the MITB match. Who the hell is even laying out their gimmick matches now? Between that ladder match and all the horrible Chamber matches, somebody is badly fucking up.

4. Big Show vs. Ryback

ER: Fairly fun match until that completely bankrupt finish. Miz is one of the most fast forwardable guys in wrestling. I'm surprised he's still wrestling after those concussion years ago, as ever since he came back from those he has never been able to take offense, especially strikes. He holds his arms out extended almost completely whenever taking anything to the head or face.

5. Kevin Owens vs. John Cena

ER: After Elimination Chamber, Phil talked about how Cena may have become the best indy dream match worker, and after this match I'm with him. It's too much fun seeing Cena pull out all sorts of new offense in his late 30s, and work reversal heavy indy matches. It's also kind of crazy just how much offense they're letting Owens do. I mean they have made every single wrestler reel in their arsenal, and Owens is wrestling almost exactly the same as he would in PWG. I can't totally wrap my brain around it. Has their been any worker of the last decade who they have changed LESS? This rematch is a little overly long, but if you're working a PWG tribute match than obviously you HAVE to go too long. That is of utmost importance. It did get a bit move-tradey which isn't my favorite, but it was balanced out by seeing Cena break out a Code Red and a nice rana and take shit like rotating superplexes and a powerbomb into the apron. Steen stealing all of Cena's offense and doing it better was a nice touch; loved his fist drop. Steen also did a good job covering for the potential Code Red blunder, acting like he was attempting to reverse it and do EZ Money's old Money Bag finisher. This was all super fun but I will repeat that I wish these two would have been in the MITB match instead, so we wouldn't have Cena getting his win back just two weeks later.  At least Steen got to be a total shithead postmatch, people will remember him killing Cena after more than they'll remember his loss.

6. Xavier Woods & Big E vs. Prime Time Players

ER: Good tag and nice to see PTP get the belts. Hopefully they get to hang onto them for awhile. Young played FIP most of the match and Titus is a great hot tag guy. Great clothesline over the top, great backbreaker followed by tossing Woods aside, nice Pounce. This guy has major star potential and it seems like they may be realizing that. Big E takes a nice missed shoulder into the post, and then breaks out a CRAZY suicide dive/spear while Young was on the apron. Also loved Big E locking on an abdominal stretch while slapping the New Day Rocks chant on Young's ribs. Nice little touch. Nice tag match.

7. Ladder Match: Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins

ER: Man I really dug this, my favorite singles match between these two. I mean jeez I'm not sure any match needs 35 minutes. I wonder what was the last WWE singles match that went 35. Still this was plenty brutal and there were some just lunatic spots, the kind of things you expect to see when you go to an indy show that takes place behind a bar with untrained workers. I loved how most of this wasn't a climbing contest like that shitfest of a MITB match. Instead it was more of a fight that used ladders as weapons, and only for climbing when necessary. Focusing on the asskicking instead of the climbing is a simple but HUGE difference. Ambrose was great at getting his knee worked over. I don't recall the last time I bought into a figure four that much, I bought into the pain, and Rollins was killer with his "How ya gonna climb the ladder, Dean!? How ya gonna climb!?" The knee couldn't be sold the WHOLE time but I thought he was good at going back to it. Rollins took some manly shots, getting annihilated with a clothesline off the top rope, getting knocked ass over elbow off the rebound lariat (which was nicely countered a couple times). All of the nasty bumps onto ladders, over announce tables, into the barricades, it was nutty fucking stuff. The big stuff looked great, the small stuff like Ambrose's shots to the ribs and Rollin's shit talk all worked, and I actually enjoyed the shitty finish. Not sure where this leaves Ambrose though.

Overall a good show. The actual gimmick match the PPV is named for was atrocious, but everything else was inoffensive at worst, all the way up to really good. So that's not a horrible night of wrestling right there.

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